The Bizarre Case of Roger Griffon
by Rex Amundi
Summary: A murder mystery featuring Wesley as a supersleuth. Chapters 3 and 4(revised) up.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters that I portray here.  
  
When Detective Kate Lockley had told Wesley Wyndham-Price to come down to the Pasteur Building he'd expected something was very amiss. It wasn't usual procedure to contact a Private Investigator, but they needed his skills.  
  
When his foot crossed into the apartment his nostrils were filled with the stench of fresh blood. There was no furniture amiss, it all looked like it had be expertly cleaned by a team of Danish cleaners who'd just won the Cleaning World Cup for cleanliness, he doubted anybody lived here. He saw Lockley walking out of a door opposite to the way in.  
  
The room he was in was large, almost as big as the lobby of the Hotel. The floor was wooden planks polished to perfection with various painting hanging around the outside. To his left was an ornate staircase leading to the upstairs. In front of that was a circular table, he could make out the shapes of plates and glasses even though he was some distance away. He greeted Lockley with a smile, a cheerful smile of professional intrigue.  
  
'Glad you could come here,' said Lockley. 'It's a real mess in there,' she gestured to the room she'd just been in.  
  
'What happened here?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Roger Griffon was found here, late last night. He was sitting in his chair in his study with his throat slit from ear to ear. Went so deep it almost got to the bone.'  
  
'Dear God,' exlaimed Wesley.  
  
'You're telling me. I had to help move the body, there was blood everywhere, but no knife.'  
  
'Can I see the room, please?'  
  
'If you think you can manage it, it's one hell of a mess.'  
  
'I assure you I've seen worse.' The vomiting beetle demon came to mind. She led him across the echoest room and through the door. On the way in Wesley noticed the door had been smashed open from the outside, the single bolt was limply hanging while fragments of wood had splintered from the doorway.  
  
'Oh, that. It was done last night, they had to smash it down.'  
  
The study of Roger Griffon was immaculately organized. His desk had a single typewriter on it with a stash of papers to the left. A Persian rug was in front of it, it's purple and brown shades circling each other. Blood was congealing on the desks surface, and it still dripped onto the floor, where a huge pool some two feet across had formed. The only other pieces of funrniture in the room was a drinks cabinet, old style with embossed writing in Latin, and a bookcase with all the known masterpieces on it. Wesley slid one of the books out by its spine, it was David Copperfield. 'Sorry,' apologised Wesley, 'I forgot about not contaminating the crime scene.'  
  
'Don't worry,' replied Lockley. She was standing over by the desk. 'Forensics have combed every square millimetre of this room, if there was something to find they would have. You could piss all over the desk.'  
  
'Perhaps later.'  
  
Two shafts of light entered through the two tall windows behind and to either side of the desk, they shone their beams onto the floor. Wesley walked past the bookcase and to the window, he tapped on them with his knuckles. 'Secure,' he said.  
  
'Are you kidding,' said Lockley, 'he was safer than Fort Knox in here. Those bars outside are two centimetres thick and mounted to the wall with ten centimetre brackets.'  
  
'Sorry, detective,' said Wesley. 'I fail to see why I'm here.'  
  
'Yeah, forgot that part. The room was locked, right. And the knife was found outside, he was murdered.'  
  
'Ah, the classical locked room mystery. How did a murdered get in and out without leaving the door open behind him?'  
  
'I remembered that Dorien Grey case you handled a few weeks ago and gave you a call. Do you know what else makes this hard to believe?'  
  
'No.'  
  
'He had a gun in his left top drawer. Why would you let someone walk right up to you and cut your throat if you had a gun next to you?'  
  
'Was it loaded?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Six rounds, hollow point. Unusual bullets for a home piece.'  
  
Wesley was so busy looking around her didn't even see the foresic scientist walk in. He was checking the drinks cabinet when she said: 'No- one could hide inside that, Mister Wyndham-Price. But it does have a nice seventy-four Chardonay.'  
  
'I was just thinking, maybe a shard of glass could have done it, Mrs . . .'  
  
'Doctor Melissa Hemmingway, chief forensic officer at the scene.' She had her red hair pulled back in a ponytail that sat under her cap. Her white smocks gave away nothing about her physique, but she was fairly attractive by classical standards if a little small. Wesley guessed she was about five six and in her late twenties. 'I checked the room, there's no way anyone could have hidden in here and pounced. Even so, how would they get out? Wait until the cops come then filter out, too risky.' She walked over to him and shook his hand vigourously.  
  
'Nice to meet you,' said Wesley.  
  
'I'll let you two knock heads for a minute,' said Lockley as she left. 'I've got to interview the doorman, Doctor Hemmingway can fill you in on all the details, bye.'  
  
'So, mister Wyndham-Price, what's your view?' She was standing less than a foot from Wesley's body, he took the initiative and backed off to the window.  
  
'Wesley, please, call me Wesley.'  
  
'Okay, Wesley, what's your opinion?'  
  
Wesley stood behind the chair, careful not to get his feet on the blood print, he was aware of Dr Hemmingway's wandering eyes. Up and down his body like a fashion reviewer. He wiped it away from thw surface of his mind and put both his hands out straight. 'Mr Griffon was working here-.'  
  
'How can you assume that?' interjected Dr Hemmingway.  
  
'His typewriter, complete with a piece of paper half way through.'  
  
'But the paper's blank.'  
  
'He was about to type. The door was open.'  
  
'Why was it open? Why not bolted shut?'  
  
'Please, let me finish.'  
  
'Sorry, Wesley. We real investigators have to run everything through, check every possibility, see if they match the facts.'  
  
'Which are?'  
  
'The police had to smash the door open,' said the flame-haired scientist. 'Any as far as we know humans can't walk through solid matter.'  
  
Wesley daydreamed, he knew of several demons that could walk through doors like they weren't there, but her kept the information back. He had no idea how a rational doctor would take such leads.  
  
'So we must say,' added Dr Hemmingway, 'that the door was open until the killer locked it behind him. That has to be the version of event. One should never assume, Wesley. Assumation is the fiery bitch of our professions. You start thinking in one dimension, then soon that's all you can think of.'  
  
'Maybe Griffon closed the door himself,' said Wesley, knowing full well he couldn't have. He'd have been much to dead to move. He just wanted to see how she would reason it away from that particular way things happened, to gauge her intellect.  
  
'Griffon closed the door himself? Hah. There's not a drop of blood away from the desk, he died there in less than twenty seconds. Could you even do it without the hindrance of pints of blood coursing over your jacket? Your vision blurred, your lungs filling with fluid, your brain losing the ability to think due to blood loss, your strength sapped?'  
  
'Just a suggestion. As you said, we should cover all possibilities. "When you have eliminated the impossibe, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."'  
  
'Quoting Doyle now,' commented Dr Hemmingway.  
  
'You've read Doyle?' inquired Wesley.  
  
'Of course. The exploits of the worlds greatest detective are legendary, if fictional.'  
  
'But his methods were not.'  
  
'No, they were the basis of modern forensic science,' informed Dr Hemmingway, even though she had an uncanny feeling Wesley knew it all. 'You have a nice accent.'  
  
'I was born and raised in Kent, the Garden of England.'  
  
'Why did you move to America, surely not because of a detective agency?'  
  
'No,' Wesley said. it was odd how they were having a converstaion, not unlike if they were sitting in a bar, in a murder scene, less than ten feet from the fatal spot, as it were. 'I came to America for my job. After a brief sabbatical I met with some of my former friends and joined their Detective Agency. We've built up quite a reputation in certain circles.'  
  
Dr Melissa Hemmingway didn't know what to make of the Englishman. His accent, his knowledge, his smouldering good looks, he seemed to have it all. And she wanted it. It wasn't as though Melissa was needy, she learned at a young age the only person you could rely on was yourself. her father left, her mother commited suicide, she only got out of the whole mess by enroling in the police force where she learned she had a special eye for forensic science. The LAPD payed for her to go through medical school and she came out a fully-qualified doctor. She liked to believe her liking of Sherlock Holmes and other detective stories helped her along, but her mentors said she had natural talent. The natural talent that allowed her to work her way up to her current station in life in less than three years. 'Anyway, why would a murderer bother to lock the door behind him? It makes no sense.'  
  
'The criminal mind often doesn't,' commented Wesley.  
  
'The only reason I can think of is that he wanted to create an impossible mystery. Why would he do that?'  
  
'For someone who doesn't assume a lot, you sure seem set on it being a male.'  
  
'Statistics say that males commit two-thirds of all murders, I'm a realist.'  
  
'Still, we mustn't assume it was a male. In fact, someone who could get so close without being shot, and could put their arms around his neck without him being suspicious, might in fact be a woman. A jealous lover, perhaps?'  
  
'She'd certainly be jealous enough,' said Dr Hemmingway. 'With that young woman being in his house with him.'  
  
'What? I didn't know there was someone with him.'  
  
'Calm down, she's dead too. I thought Lockley would have told you it was a double homicide.'  
  
'No she bloody well didn't!'  
  
'Sorry, Wes. Can I call you Wes?'  
  
'Yes.'  
  
'Well it isn't half as baffling as this one. The murder weapons right besides her. Get this, the same knife killed them both.'  
  
'There goes a spur of the moment murder, a crime of passion. Most people would drop the knife when reality settled in, this person was going to kill again. Maybe they knew there was someone else with him, maybe they just wanted the knife.'  
  
'I know the profiles, Wes,' commented Dr Hemmingway. 'Heck, I wrote some of them. I know normal M.O. I know the statistics like they were sown on the back of my eyelids. And from what I know, jealous women who've just killed tend to be more rational. She may have planned it all. The way I see it is that the man kills him. He hears something in the other room, goes out, sees the girl, kills her. Drops the knife and runs like all.'  
  
'After closing the door behind himself, which may give the woman enough time to scream the house down?'  
  
'Good point. But we do have a witness, in a sense, which can back my version of events up,' said Dr Hemmingway. She reached into her top left pocket and pulled out a notepad.  
  
'A witness?'  
  
'In a sense, Wes. The neighbour heard a man scream at eleven fifteen in the evening. Less than one minute later, probably about forty seconds, they heard another scream, this time it was female.'  
  
'Hmm. Can I see the other scene, please?'  
  
'Of course.' She led him out of the study and through the big room, then through a large archway and into another large room. In roughly the middle of the floor was a bloodstain, that of the second victim. The floor was the same polished wood, and a computer, which was the only technical device in the apartment, sat on a desk near the door. At the far side, flanking the tall window, was a set of bookcases. Besides the large portal behind him, Wesley could see three other doors, two closed and the third, the one to his right, open. The room was empty except for a technician who was gathering up fibres from the floors. A white circle of tape indicated where the weapon had lay.  
  
'The murder weapon, a combat knife, we think, was found two metres from the womans body,' explained Dr Hemmingway. 'Now the body was laying face down, pointing towards the window indicating her assailant attacked her from behind. She managed a scream, but the killer had no trouble with her.'  
  
'Away from the study?' questioned Wesley. 'Didn't she hear the scream of Mr Griffon?'  
  
'She may have been running away.'  
  
'Running to where? The doors in the other direction.'  
  
'Sometimes when you're running for your life, it doesn't matter which direction you choose to go in.'  
  
'But in this case it does. Every direction apart from going straight to the door is pointless. What about the door man, did he see the yong lady enter?'  
  
'Detective Lockley is questioning him as we speak,' informed Dr Hemmingway. 'Even if he didn't doesn't mean she didn't come in the front way, he must need to go to the bathroom, maybe get something to eat.'  
  
'Wait a second,' said Wesley. He had a glazed look in his eyes. 'I think I know how Mr Griffon was killed and locked inside the room. It's so simple, why didn't I see it before.'  
  
'What is it?'  
  
'I think you'd better look at that door, Doctor.'  
  
Dr Hemmingway scratched her head, then got the idea. 'Christ, how could I miss that?' she asked herself.  
  
'Don't bother yourself,' said Wesley thoughtfully. 'I'm sure you would have thought of it.'  
  
'Are you flirting with me, Mr Wyndham-Price?' asked Dr Hemmingway coyly.  
  
'I was just-'  
  
'How about we get something to eat later?'  
  
Wesley took his glasses off and wiped them with the nap of his grey jacket. 'Perhaps we should wait until this case is solved so as not involve ourselves . . . intimately while we still have to work'  
  
He was a gentleman too, thought Melissa Hemmingway. He was the kind of man you could take home and introduce to your parents, if hers were still alive. 'The way I see things, we'll have this case wrapped up in a day or too anyway. So say, eight at my place, we'll go to a little Italian Bistro near where I live. Here, this is my home address.' She handed him a scrap of paper with a hastily written down address on it.  
  
'I would be delighted to accompany you,' declared Wesley.  
  
Oh that accent, she could smother herself in it. 'Lockley's downstairs. I'll have that door checked and then I'll run a few tests on the bodies, shouldn't take long.'  
  
'Well then, see you later.' Wesley waved her goodbye and walked out of the apartment with a huge grin on his face. 


	2. The Mystery Deepens

'We'll, your hunch was right,' said Dr Hemmingway, as she sliced her cod about with surgical precision. 'That bolt was made of iron.' Melissa was wearing a powder-blue strapless dress that showed some of her cleavage off, it came down to above her knees, a stark contrast to the shapeless smocks she'd been wearing earlier. Her red hair was worn up, with a few wisps curling down about her face.  
  
'A simple deduction, really,' explained Wesley as he took a bite of chicken. He was wearing a nice black suit with a crisp white shirt, it was tight enough to show off his physique, which he was quite proud about, but no so tight as to cut off his circulation. The tie his suit came with was missing, he wanted to show an air of mystery and danger about himself.  
  
He'd suspected that there was nothing wrong with the door when he saw it. A huge slab of solid oak that took two of LA's finest to smash open wasn't on a simple hinge switch or anything, he'd checked that when he walked in. No, it was the bolt that was the solution. Being iron meant it was magnetic, all the killer would have to have done was close the door and slide the bolt across with a magnet, ingenius, he was also quite disturbed. Any mind that could come up with such an idea was obviouly creative enough to try and baffle the police another time. Perhaps another murder was too follow, and another, until they caught the perpetrator. He looked at his date, and then saw something on one of her elegant fingers, it was a ring, with a large ruby in it. 'You're not married, are you?'  
  
'Why do you ask? Oh, this?' she put her cutlery down and twisted the ring round on the index finger of her right hand. 'No, this was my mom's. The only thing I have of her's, unless you include sexual appetite.'  
  
'Uhm, yes,' Wesley wasn't sure how to say anything after that crack.  
  
'Joking, Wes,' said Melissa. 'I have a wicked sense of humour.'  
  
'Well I have quite an acerbic wit, too.'  
  
'Tell me, tell me about your detective agency. Had any difficult cases?'  
  
'Well it isn't really my agency,' said Wesley. He clicked his fingers and the waiter came over and filled his glass up with a red wine. After he'd done his job he put it back in the ice container and walked off. 'It's my friends, he's Angel.'  
  
'Angel, unusual name.'  
  
'He's an unusual chap.'  
  
'What kind of cases do you normally take, if you don't mind me asking?'  
  
'Husbands wanting to know if their wives are cheating, the usual,' replied Wesley. He couldn't tell her about the demonology aspect to her. Hardly anybody from the waking world knew of vampires and demons, those that did often fell in too far, and too fast and ended up missing. 'Changing the subject, did the autopsies reveal anything?'  
  
'Here we are, having a nice meal in Franco's, very difficult to get reservations I may add, and you bring up dead bodies.'  
  
'I didn't think this was solely pleasure, I thought we'd discuss business too.'  
  
'Well, actually. The lab ran a bloodwork on the female, turns out she had some strange stuff in her blood.'  
  
'Drugs?'  
  
'No, something else. I've got one of the other doctors doing a full post mortem as we speak. Whatever it is, we'll find the cause.'  
  
'What about Griffon himself?'  
  
'Nothing out of the ordinary, alcohol and some prescription medication.'  
  
'Do you think it would be possible for me to have another look around the murder scene?' asked Wesley. 'I have some things running around my head, nagging doubts.'  
  
'I don't see why not,' said Melissa. She took a sip of her wine and sloshed it round her mouth for a moment, it had a taste of strawberries.  
  
'Can you have detective Lockley meet me there?'  
  
'Not a problem. The Police Chief was a friend of Griffons, they moved in the same social circuit, he's given Lockley top-priority on the case. Says he wants it solved post haste. Now, is that all of the business out of the way?'  
  
***  
  
Wesley was woken up when a shaft of light flickered across his eyes. He opened his eyes slowly, and saw Melissa Hemmingway pulling back the curtains. Her hair cascaded around her face, she was wearing one of Wesleys shirts, a blue and white vertical stripped affair.  
  
'I said you'd meet Lockley at nine sharp,' she said as she saw Wesley awake. 'You'd better get ready, it's half past eight.'  
  
He remebered last night vividly, after they left Franco's they went and saw a movie. He couldn't remember which one, they'd spent most of it sucking face in the back row. As they came home they couldn't keep their hands off one another, they barely got through the doorway of Wesley's apartment when pure animal lust took over. The experience was wild, beyond anything Wesley had known before, he had no idea it could be so . . . special.  
  
'I'll see you later, I've gotta go home and change.' She was pulling on her blue dress, she'd found it on the hallway floor in a heap. She went into the bedroom wardrobe and took out one of Wesley's jackets which she put on and then she was gone. Suddenly Wesley was aware that his sheets were covered in sweat, his and hers. He was so thirsty. After putting on the kettle for a cup of tea he took a quick shower, got changed and met Lockley at the dead man's apartment, it was only five past when he walked out of the lift on the twelth floor.  
  
***  
  
This time the doorway leading into Griffon's apartment was covered with Police Line: Do Not Cross tape, he lifted up the blue and white plastic and ducked underneath. Standing in the middle of the cavernous chamber was detective Lockley. She was wearing one of her trademark professional trouser suits, this one was light brown. In her hands was a brown folder. 'Good morning, Wesley,' she said when she saw him go under the tape.  
  
'Good morning, detective,' greeted Wesley. 'I just had some things to go over here, a few ideas. Sorry if I took you out of serious investigation, I need someone to bounce ideas off.'  
  
'Don't worry, we've drawn a complete blank. Frankly I thought you'd help things along.'  
  
'Did Melissa, I mean Doctor Hemmingway, tell you about the study door?'  
  
'Yeah, whoever it was was real cunning. Using a magnet to move the bolt while outside, smart.'  
  
'But it did nothing,' said Wesley. 'It wouldn't make us think it was suicide, so why did they do it, thats what I've been asking myself.'  
  
'You got me,' replied Lockley. 'Here,' she handed him the folder, 'this is everything we've got on the case, witness statements, lab reports, everything.'  
  
Wesley stood there and opened the folder up, on the front was a tiny white label which read: Griffon Case, he looked at the first page, it was a report about the security in the place. Every window had bars, even the upstairs balcony was bolted and locked from the inside. Even assuming someone could get onto the thirteenth floor the barred doors would be impossible to get past. 'It says here the front door was locked.'  
  
'Yeah, I talked to the officer who had to break it down. It was locked and deadbolted, the building manager had to open it with his master set.'  
  
'Apparently it's the only way in and out.'  
  
'If that's what the report says then I'd have to agree.'  
  
Wesley digested the rest of the report. He read most of the windows had been painted shut. An air conditioner in the bedroom allowed cool air to flow into it, but the bathroom had no such luxuries. 'Where's the bathroom?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Past where the dead girl was, second on the left.'  
  
'Thank you, can you come with me?'  
  
'Wes, we're on a case here.'  
  
'Just follow me, please.'  
  
He opened the door, like the other areas of the house the bathroom was suitably large, some three square metres with black and a white chessboard tiled floor. Across from the door way was the bath, a white plastic thing large enough to fit three people into it. To his left, behind the opened door was a glass and steel shower unit, Wesley noticed that it had three showerheads, each to spout piping hot water onto the user from three different angles. The toilet, elegant enough for the Queen, was just past the shower, it had a wooden seat. On top of the cistern was three rolls of four-ply toilet paper, oh how the other half live, though Wesley. On his right was a sink, pink marble with gold taps. A painting which looked like someone had thrown up on it was hung above sink, the only window in the room was over the end of the bath. The room was dark because it faced west, so Wesley flicked the lightswitch. Four conical lamps, one on each wall, snapped on, their light cast had a pink hue to it. 'Aha,' said Wesley as he saw the window.  
  
'Do you think it opens?' asked Lockley. She was standing in the doorway, watching Wesley as he stood in the bath and grabbed the lever at the bottom of the glass.  
  
The window itself was a scant metre wide and metre high, a perfect square. The glass in the panes was frosted to preserve privacy, and the shape of bars could be made out behind it. Wesley yanked the lever up and felt something give, he pulled it towards himself and the right side of the window opened a crack. He pulled harder and it opened more. He felt the plastic frame hit the steel bars and stopped his effort. The window had opened some twenty five centimetres.  
  
'Well I'll be,' stated Lockley. 'That's enough for a person to slip through. You'd have to be slim, but it's enough.'  
  
Wesley poked his head out of the open window. The people down below were tiny, going about their lives as he watched from above. He turned his gaze horizontally and looked at the buildings across from him. Because the bathroom was right at the corner or the building it could be approached from any place. He looked up and saw the steel bars of the balcony. 'Have you checked the balcony?'  
  
'Of course,' replied Lockley. 'What do you think this is, Hick County? We take our murders seriously.'  
  
'Anything up there?'  
  
'Not a thing. Griffon had a couple of potted plants up there, but nothing out of the ordinary.'  
  
'Care if I take a look?'  
  
'Let's go.'  
  
As Wesley went up the staircase he saw a complete winerack obscured from view by said thing. Griffon was some collector, he must've had a hundred bottles, mostly red, but some white. They passed into Griffon's bedroom. The huge bed sat against the outside wall, the beige sheets were immaculate. There was a big trunk at the bottom of it, wooden and iron, a good few centuries old, no doubt. Above the bed was a hanging piece of art, a large piece some two metres across and metre high. Depicted on it was a classic scene of farmers bringing in the crop, shire horses and ploughs were in the middle distance while a brilliant blue sky lined it. On the right of the bed was a glass door with white plastic bits around it. Lockley depressed a black handle and slid it across. The noise it made was reminiscent of the Original Star Trek's sliding doors opening.  
  
Wesley stepped out onto the balcony, the wind swept his hair across and his long, black coat flicked about. The view was amazing, he could see most of Glendale, in the distance was the verdant Griffith Park. The floor he was standing on was made of steel planks painted a midknight black. He took hold of the cold, metal rail, and looked down the sides. The balcony was over a metre wide and extended along the entirety of Griffons apartment. On either side was the afformentioned plant pots with some type of Azalea in it.  
  
'I take it the door was locked?'  
  
'Yeah. The boys left it open after they checked the place, but it was locked tight on the night.'  
  
Wesley looked at the door closely, the mechanisms were all internal, and there was no hole on the outside. He felt around the plastic but found nothing of consequence. Looking up as he walked along the balcony he could see the side of the roof. It was at least five metres up. Not impossible if someone dropped down.  
  
'Can you get to the roof?'  
  
'Yeah. All the residents have a key, apparently Six Bee like to sunbathe nude up there.'  
  
'You asked the residents that?'  
  
'No, they just said it. Said they were up there on the infamous night. They thought someone was watching them up there, they came down about six. We had a laugh, nobody would peep at them, they're about seventy.'  
  
Wesley felt the rail as he went down to the corner, above where the bathroom was. He looked through the small gaps in the floor and saw the ajar window. His fingers probed the metal rail and found the small indentation in it. It was a thin mark a few millimetres thick and it ran around the outside of the bar, not at all on the inside. A theory began to piece itself together.  
  
As Lockley looked out at the vista her cell phone started to chirp. She pulled it out of her inside jacket pocket and flipped the bottom bit down. The wind began to whistle in her ears and she went inside to take the call, leaving Wesley alone with his thoughts.  
  
Lockley walked back onto the balcony a minute later. She folded her phone back to its tiny size and put it back in her pocket. She looked pensive.  
  
'Do you have an ID for the girl?' asked Wesley.  
  
'No. Not yet. But that was about her.'  
  
'What is it?'  
  
'Dr Hemmingway found something during her autopsy. She's found a brain tumour, quite some size, she'd have been dead in a few weeks at most. It was untreatable.'  
  
'She had a brain tumour, yet didn't live long enough to die from it.'  
  
'What?' asked Lockley.  
  
'Sorry. Just thinking out loud.'  
  
'Have you seen all you want out here?'  
  
'All I need too, yes.'  
  
'Well lets go inside, I'm freezing my eyeballs.'  
  
'You should have invested in a coat like mine,' suggested Wesley. 'Not only does it keep you warm and dry, but it looks cool too. Can I see the-'  
  
'Don't tell me, the roof?'  
  
'Yes.'  
  
'Come on, I'll lock up.'  
  
They went outside the apartment and Lockley did up the police-issue padlock they'd placed on the door. She led Wesley up three flights of stairs, the last door was a steel number with just a keyhole. Lockley pulled out a small Yale key from her pocket and undid the lock. It led onto the roof, nothing much there apart from a collection of satellite dishes and antenna. Wesley walked over to the west face and looked over the side. The lip of the building came up just thirty centimetres. Below him was the balcony. He walked right up to the corner and looked at the bricks at the top. As he'd suspected there was a trough-like mark that ran along the top and got deeper towards the edge.  
  
'What is it?' asked Lockley. She had to shout to get her voice above the howling wind.  
  
'Let's go inside where we can talk properly,' replied Wesley. 


	3. 3

'What is it, Wes?' asked Detective Kate Lockley. 'Did you see something?' They were both standing in Griffon's spacious bedroom. The dark blue carpet contrasted the white walls.  
  
'If she's running an autopsy,' started Wesley, 'then will a full stomach content test be ran.'  
  
'That's standard procedure.'  
  
Wesley cracked open the folder he was holding, he layed in on the double- bed and lifted sheets of paper out until he got to the report on the food that was laying on the circular table. 'Salmon, sweet potatoes and white wine.'  
  
'What about them?'  
  
'That was what the lab reported was the meal layed out downstairs. Two plates, two glasses and an empty bottle.'  
  
'You think you got something?'  
  
'Quite possibly. Can you get Dr Hemmingway back on the phone, I want to know if the woman had any alcohol in her bloodstream.'  
  
'Sure, Wes,' said Lockley as she pulled out her minature phone. She pressed the redial button and got straight through. 'Hi, Dr Hemmingway, this is Detective Lockley. I need to know, did the woman have any alcohol in her blood? . . . Really? Yeah, thanks. That's all I needed to know.' She clicked the phone down and turned to Wesley. 'No trace of alcohol,' she explained.  
  
'No alcohol in her, yet their were two glasses. I think Mr Griffon had another visitor that evening. Talk to the doorman, it was a woman.'  
  
'How do you know it was a woman?'  
  
'Lipstick on the second glass was a dead giveaway. And I think that if we find out who the dead woman is, then we'll be able to close the case.'  
  
'Really? I have a couple of detectives working on it, trying to find a name for her.'  
  
'If they're using legitimate channels don't bother yourself, she won't be there.'  
  
'Then where do we look?'  
  
***  
  
Detective Lockley walked through the large doors of Klondike Fashion and past row upon row of designer suits and fashionable dresses. All colours but no sizes over fifteen. The desk at the end of the shop was made of solid wood, old style with knots and bows in the surface. A single clerk was standing behind the till, dressed in a blue blazer sporting the logo of Klondike Fashion on one side and a name tag on her left. 'Hello, Emily,' said Lockley. 'I'm with the Los Angeles Police Department, I was told you stock a certain type of dress here.'  
  
'Of course, detective. What are you looking for?'  
  
The desciption Dr Hemmingway had given her was very detailed. The dead woman was wearing a dark-blue evening dress with a plunging neckline, it ended above the knees and it was sort of tight around her waist. Her hair was light-brown and worn up, her eyes, a hazel colour, and blue pumps. Her ears were pierced, yet she had no earrings in. She was attractive, could've been a model or something, with perfect bone structure and skin tone. The only personal piece on her was a silver anklet, it was lacking a hallmark which had been filed off. The clerk knew which dress she was talking about, a fairly daring backless number which had a hefty price tag.  
  
'That's the one,' said Lockley. 'Do you have a reciept for it?'  
  
'Let me check,' said Emily. She went behind the desk and reached into one of the drawers and pulled out an A4 notebook with a hard, black cover. She opened it up and flicked through the pages until she got to the right date. 'It was payed with in cash,' informed Emily. 'Fairly odd since it costs almost five hundred dollars.'  
  
'Do you remember anything about the person who purchased it?'  
  
'Now you ask me, I do. She was beautiful, and Russian, I think.'  
  
Russian?'  
  
'Yeah, definitely Russian.'  
  
Lockley noted it down. 'When was this?'  
  
'January the third, this year.'  
  
'You've been a great help, thank you.'  
  
'We do discount for policewomen,' said Emily.  
  
Lockley chuckled as she headed for the Mall Security Office. On her salary the closest she'd gotten to a Klondike had been when she escorted a corpse out.  
  
***  
  
'Yet again, Wes, your feeling was right,' said Dr Melissa Hemmingway as she met Wesley in the corridor of the LAPD Precinct 17. They were down among the dead men, the Morgue beneath the station house proper. Antiseptic air, cold as all flowed about, channeled through several A/C units mounted at strategic places.  
  
'Really?' asked Wesley. He looked at the woman he'd spent the night with, she was wearing corpse-issue gear, a long white coat and medical gloves.  
  
'Yep, stomach contents was what you'd find if you had a McDonalds.'  
  
Alright, so he hadn't actually guessed in that kind of detail, but his idea was simple: The dead woman was not who the meal was laid out for, and therefore would not have the contents inside her stomach of said meal. This meant that another line of enquiry could be drawn up, working by the idea that Mr Griffon was a popular man, with two houseguests the night he died.  
  
As they got closer Melissa handed him a folder, a brown cardboard one with a sheets of paper inside.  
  
'Also, she said, 'it was eaten less than an hour before she died.'  
  
'She may have been a prostitute,' said Wesley, 'Griffon may have called for her when he got nothing from his date.'  
  
'If she was a hooker, that's what we call them in the US, Wes, she wasn't a very good one. She hasn't had sex for at least two weeks.'  
  
'You can tell that with a post mortem?'  
  
'I can tell you what your favourite colour is,' joked Melissa.  
  
An unerving silence reverberated through the walls, Melissa cleared her throat. 'I think Detective Lockley has a lead, she following it up right now.'  
  
'What is that then?'  
  
'She called me earlier, got a desciption of the dress. It's a pretty expensive one, I think she can trace it.'  
  
'Interesting,' said Wesley, he hadn't even though of that line of enquiry . . . yet.  
  
This must be the famous British reserve, though Melissa, if it was an American she probably wouldn't have heard from him ever again, yet another layer to this man. She thought better of it to mention the events of last night, especially when they were so deep in the work they had, solving the murder of Roger Griffon.  
  
'Lockley mentioned you had her walking around the entire building,' said Melissa.  
  
'Yes, just to clear a few things up.'  
  
'Did it?'  
  
'Actually, yes. I think I've worked out how, all we need is the why.'  
  
'The motive?'  
  
'Yes, the elusive motive.'  
  
'I think I can help you out there, Wes. Mrs Griffon called this morning, from Paris, she want him to be buried as soon as.'  
  
'Suspicious.'  
  
'Yep. But there's nothng funny in his blood or his organs, she's got no reason to want him in the ground, for God's sake she's barely time to mourn.'  
  
'She's in Paris while Mr Griffon is entertaining women friends, I think they're no love loss between them. And I've heard of some Wills that people want their deaths investigated to the full extent, even if it's an accident or natural causes.'  
  
'So this woman wants her husband buried because the Will won't go into effect until he is. Why would she need money that quickly?'  
  
'Gambling debts,' mused Wesley.  
  
Somehow they had stalled in the corridor, looking at each other, teasing their minds.  
  
'He was a rich man,' commented Melissa. 'A rich writer, who by all accounts had just finished his final book.'  
  
'Bound to boost the salies if he had a mysterious death. A motive!'  
  
They looked across the two metre gap between them, their eyes met. Each saw something in the other that they didn't have in themselves, that they'd probably been searching for their entire lives. True love? Here, in a morgue? Stranger things had happened.  
  
They kissed passionately, Melissa jumped into Wesley's powerful arms, her legs wrapped around his body. His hands began to wander down the curves of her body, under the plastic autopsy clothing while her hands clasped his face and held on with dear life. Melissa uncrossed her legs, she pointed to a wooden door set into the side of the corrdior, her mouth went as far from Wesley's as she dared, words formed in her throat. 'In here, it's the duty coroners office, he's on holiday.'  
  
Wesley and Melissa were wrapped in each others grasp as they opened the door, Melissa closed and locked it. She ran back to the plain desk and knocked everything off it with one sweep of her arm and looked at Wesley longingly.  
  
***  
  
Lockley took another sip from her polystyrene cup of coffee, it tasted like mud, but it was sure to be packed full of caffine so she drank it.  
  
Five hours, five stinking hours in this little office, searching for a glance, an image of the Russian woman. She'd lost count of how many cups of coffee she'd consumed.  
  
'This is it, I think,' said the beefy guard. He pulled a single VHS cassette from a cardboard box that had been under a shelf of similar boxes, slid the box back and put the cassette into the machine.  
  
'If it was down there, why did it take you so long to find it?' asked Lockley.  
  
The security man shrugged and depressed the play button. 'God moves in mysterious ways,' he muttered to himself, more than Lockley.  
  
An image came up on the fifteen inch, black and white, Sony screen. It was from the camera from the boulevard on which the Klondike Fashion store stood, the date was in the bottom right-hand corner, it was 3:1:02, the date the dress was purchased by the esoteric female.  
  
The security man leant back on the back two legs of his metal seat. 'What time were you looking for?' he asked her.  
  
'I don't know,' replied Lockley. 'Just keep going until you've got something.'  
  
'This tape only records four hours of the day, detective.'  
  
'Just keep a lookout for a woman coming out of Klondike fashion, please.' God she hated these rent-a-cops, always trying to show them they could make an officer. Lockley wouldn't have even had to come here if Klondike didn't tape over their security cassettes every week, a cost- saving measure that made her feel sick, or was that the weird-looking coffee?  
  
Her eyes bleered a little as fast-moving people zipped about their daily lives, probably shopping for bargains after the Christmas glut which left unwanted gifts laying about store shelves. Eventually, at 4:11 PM, screen time, the woman walked into the Klondike Fashion store. She'd approached from the same direction as the camera was pointing down, so Lockley could only see her dark hair that had been wrapped into a nice bob.  
  
'Play it realtime,' instructed Lockley.  
  
'You see something?' asked the security guard.  
  
'Yes, the person we've been looking for, now play it normally so we can see her coming out.'  
  
'Sure.' He pressed the horozontal triangle and the image ceased its celerity and settled down to normal speed. Half a minute passed before the woman walked out of the store, back down the way she had come, which allowed the camera toget a perfectly clear shot of her face and upper body.  
  
'Pause it!'  
  
The man did as he was told.  
  
'Can you zoom in?'  
  
'Shouldn't be a problem.' He reached forward and grabbed a little stick that was on a base connected to the monitor. His free hand searched for a button on the side, and when he found it, the image flicked inwards. He continued to go in and pan across at the same time, showing off his technical prowess until it got to the young woman with a dress draped across her arms.  
  
'Gotcha,' said Lockley proudly. 'Go in a bit further.'  
  
The screen went in again, and Lockley stopped him when it was just her head and neck, with a few people in the background.  
  
'That's her.'  
  
'You wanna screen shot of her?'  
  
'Yeah, go on.'  
  
A printer in the corner of the room screeched to life. A sheet of paper began to push out from the printers ass and when it had finished Lockley snatched it up and went outside, glad to be free of the environment and the guards many interesting smells.  
  
***  
  
Melissa was doing up her shirt and throwing the odd glance at Wesley who was also getting dressed. They heard the footprints approached, click- clacking down the corridor and held their breathe. When they started to recede they both gave a little sigh of relief. That was close.  
  
It took another couple of minutes before Melissa was ready to leave. Wesley had exited about a minute earlier, to make it look nonchalont. He walked into the Morgue's main area, the one with a row of steel trays to hold bodies on one side and came across Lockley who was looking about the examination area.  
  
'Hello, detective,' he said as he approached her.  
  
Lockley jumped a little at the sound of his masculine voice. She turned away from what she was doing and proferred a piece of paper.  
  
'What is this,' said Wesley, pulling his glases out of his top pocket. He noticed his shirt was still out, and quickly tucked it in.  
  
'That, Wes, is the woman who was found dead in Griffons apartment. She is, of course, patently alive in this picture, taken from a security camera in the Mall shortly after she purchased the dressed she was caught dead in.'  
  
'That's amazing,' said Wesley, genuinely surprised. 'So you know who she is?'  
  
Lockley cleared her throat. 'I'm still looking into it, but now we know where she was, it shouldn't be that tough.'  
  
'Are you sure? LA is a big city, lots of places to dissapear.'  
  
Lockley turned to face the new arrival as Melissa walked in, she was tucking her red hair into a ponytail as she eyeballed Lockley.  
  
'Hello, doctor, I just came down here to show you this picture. Wes.'  
  
Wesley handed her the picture of the deceased woman, feeling her warm skin before he pulled away.  
  
'It's her!' exclaimed Dr Hemmingway.  
  
'Yeah,' said Lockley. 'I think we can crack the case wide open now we have this picture.'  
  
'Why's that, detective?' asked the forensic expert.  
  
'With this we can check every Motel in LA. Hopefully we'll get a hit, then we've got our female vic.'  
  
'So,' interjected Wesley, 'you have a theory about the killings?'  
  
'No,' replied Lockely, 'I was just trying to bust open another lead.'  
  
'Did you talk to the doorman again?' he asked.  
  
'No I never got around to it, I was busy doing police work, y'know, catch the bad guys, bang, bang.'  
  
'I was just thinking with this picture you could confront the doorman.'  
  
'You wanna paint the doorman in for shooting JFK, too?' joked Lockley.  
  
'I'm sure he let the first woman out.'  
  
'First woman? quested Lockley  
  
'Yeah,' answered Hemmingway. 'Me and Wes surmised there may have been two women, the first who had to be let out by the doorman, and the second, the dead girl, who had to be let in.'  
  
'Actually,' said Lockley, 'I may have something about that.'  
  
'Really?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Yeah. Hanley, uh, he's a detective upstairs, on the case too, he's pulled up a four year old file on the doorman, just handed it to me upstairs. The boss said we have to check every lead, no matter how improbable.'  
  
'Thinking just like a forensic scientist now, detective,' commented Hemmingway.  
  
'Thanks a lot, doc. Well, it's for GBH, I think we can lean on him then, with the picture he should crack. I bet the residents of the Pasteur Building have no idea they have a convicted criminal on the door.'  
  
'So he was convicted?' asked Hemmingway.  
  
'Spent a year in Pentonville, back east.'  
  
'Ladies,' said Wesley. 'I think I see the end of the case on the horizon.' 


	4. 4

Wesley Wyndham-Price and Dr Melissa Hemmingway sat in the forensic officer on the ground floor of the LAPD Precinct 17. They were both perched on wooden stools favoured by forensic experts and sitting on the same side of the table that was in the middle of the room. A horseshoe of cabinets and scientific equipment lined the outside, complete with fancy names such as mass spectrometer and field ion microscope.  
  
'You wanna see a movie tonight?' asked Melissa as she casually looked at Wesley.  
  
'I have a feeling we'll be free tonight,' replied the suave Briton. He was quite confident the case would be solved and the offending villain put before justice.  
  
'I have a newspaper in my office, we can see what's on while we wait for the two detectives.' She got up, brushed her red hair away from her face, and approached the double-door. As she got closer she saw two silhouettes approaching from the other side, through the frosted glass. She sighed and sat back down. 'We got company.'  
  
Lockley pushed the door wide open, Hanley followed in her wake. Hanley was a big guy, six foot two at least and thick set, he looked like a perp. He looked unconfortable in his white shirt with rolled up sleeves and his tie, he was similar to Sipowitcz from NYPD Blue, without the bald head.  
  
Lockley nodded curtly to the two of them and then pulled up a stool the other side of the desk, Hanley sat next to her, he deposited a brown file onto the matt-black surface.  
  
Wesley felt the uncomfortable silence and spoke up. 'Did the doorman break?'  
  
'Yes,' replied Lockley. 'Under Handley's questionable interview techniques he cracked in under fifteen minutes, admits to it all.'  
  
'Doesn't want to loose his job,' added Hanley. 'I'm thinking about telling his bosses anyway, he was smug.'  
  
'He told us there was one woman, payed him two hundred bucks to keep quiet, swears he had no idea she was gonna kill him. Kept it quiet because it would make him look guilty.'  
  
'Mr Wyndham-Price,' said Hanley. 'Lockley informed me you said their may have been two women, looks like you were wrong.'  
  
Wesley looked at Hanley, he could see a two-day growth of beard and a scratch over his eye. 'I don't think so. If the doorman only saw one woman, how did the second get into the room?'  
  
'I don't know,' replied Lockley. 'he says he took three breaks over the course of the evening, she could've slipped in.'  
  
'She did slip in,' said Wesley, 'via the roof. 'There are furrows running over the wall directly over Griffon's bathroom window, the one that opens. There are also marks over the balcony, which she was lowered down and had to get over, so it made the marks, rope burns or whatever. She then did a fancy swinging action,' Wesley demonstrated with his hands and a piece of cord, 'which allowed her to get into the bathroom via the window opened by the first woman.'  
  
'So the first woman is a suspect?' asked Lockley.  
  
'Yes,' responded Hemmingway. 'She must've organized it, or at least be privvy to it, which makes her an accesory.'  
  
'We got a e-fit of her,' informed Hanley, 'but the doorman was payed to forget her, he did.'  
  
'Carry on,' edged Lockley.  
  
'Well, the woman comes in, she's the one currently taking up real estate in the morgue, and hears Griffon typing on his own Writemaster in his study. She had a light meal before, and any alcohol would make it harder than necessary, so her stomach contents are, what were they, doctor?'  
  
'They were a nice healthy MacDonalds. She also had what looked like pasta in there. Pasta of course, is energy food, full of carbohydrates.'  
  
'Her accomplis at this time, the one that lowered her, is now pulling in the rope and he leaves pretty sharpish. We can assume it was all set to a precise time, and any sunbathers on the roof would need to have left, so it was gonna have to be nightime. Which, of course, would be much greater because no-one would see her little repelling act down the Pasteur Buildings face.  
  
'With her the woman has a knife, and a pistol, the one found in Griffon's drawer,' continued Wesley.  
  
'Which would explain why he didn't use it,' surmised Lockley. 'Clever.'  
  
'They were very smart, whoever planned it all, but they were at a disadvantage when it would be shown the intruder would have to be made of smoke to get out afterwards. A truly impossible crime. She opens the study door, maybe it's open already and points the gun at Griffon. He's ordered to throw whatever he's typing away, out of the window, more likely she does it afterwards. It may have been a divorce note, a suicide note, who knows, it's scattered somewhere in LA now, never to be found.'  
  
'The dead woman did it?' asked a baffled Hanley.  
  
'We think she was a contract killer,' said Hemmingway.  
  
'Yeah, apart from one thing you forgot, maybe,' he covered his bases. 'Hitmen very rarely do suicide missions, they work for profit, now if she couldn't get the cash, why would she do it?'  
  
Hemmingway coughed. 'She has had at least one child, and she was going to die of a brain tumour a few weeks away, the last while of it would leave her catactonic, she had to provide for her family. One last, impossible and high-paying hit.'  
  
Wesley took back the narrative. 'She maneuvered behind Griffon and cut his throat. He screamed, which was a bit of a bugger for her, she had to move fast, probably assumed people would get a little inquisitive and find him in the morning had he not made a sound. She put the gun in his drawer, after putting his fingerprints all over it.'  
  
'He never had a gun licence,' commented Lockley.  
  
'He never owned a gun,' replied Wesley. 'She quickly went outside, careful not to step in the blood and closed the door. Here's where she magnets the lock to make it looked like he killed himself. But the knife, she needed that knife. Maybe it was expected to be some kind of mystery, push the sales of the book he'd just finished into the stratosphere, and suicide is never very good for business.  
  
'She hid the magnet in the speaker of his hi-fi system, it already has one, so no-one would think it was out of place there, and goes into the next room. She screams, slashes her own throat and throws the knife away with the last of her strength. Which is the image that the officers who bust in ran into, right?'  
  
'When you think about it, detective,' said Hemmingway, 'it all makes sense. All the forensic evidence falls into place. There were no prints on the knife or magnet, and only Griffon's on the gun. The hitwoman was smart enough to put herself about a bit. Touch the glass, grab a knife and fork, leave a few hairs about, clever on her part. It also leaves the entire house sealed, as she locks the window after she comes in. But it does have one flaw.'  
  
'You seem to have everything covered,' said Lockley. 'Except a motive.'  
  
'And the man who lowered her,' briefed Hemmingway. 'We found no traces, I'm thinking he may have been a resident, someone who who never had to leave the Building to get home.'  
  
'Who?' queried Hanley.  
  
'Don't know,' said Wesley, 'you're the detectives. But we do think we have a motive, one of the best. Greed. Who benefits if he dies, detective?'  
  
'His wife, I guess,' said Lockely, 'I'm not sure.'  
  
'Maybe he gives it all to a Cattery or something,' joked Hanley.  
  
'I think his wife would make sure she gets it all. She's in Paris at the moment, a perfect alibi, not even in the country when it happened. Her husbands supposed infidelity and his cryptic death all in the same night, spooky.'  
  
'Do you have any evidence to suggest it's her?' enquired Lockley.  
  
'The hitwoman was Russian, right?'  
  
'That's what the clerk at Klondike Fashion said.'  
  
'Has she been to Eastern Europe recently, and has she accrued massive gambling debts, or needs a lot of cash quickly?'  
  
'No idea, Wes,' said Lockley. 'But we can check it out.'  
  
'You might get lucky,' said Hemmingway. 'In fact there's a good possibility of her breaking down and confessing. Her being in Paris was no coincidence, she wanted - needed - physical distance between her and her husband who was marked for death. She may not be able to handle seeing graphic photos, or hearing how he was murdered, and how he bled to death. You could even say you had a love letter to her, stir some emotional mess inside her. She's not a cold-blooded killer.'  
  
'I hope you're right,' said Hanley. 'It really boils my blood when people get away with crimes.'  
  
Lockley stood up. 'I'll have an arrest warrant waiting at the airport for when she comes back.'  
  
'Do you have enough evidence?' asked Wesley.  
  
'Frankly no,' replied Lockely. 'But I'm sure we can get something. Hanley, how much you think a contract taken out on something like this would be?'  
  
The big detective got up, too. 'I dunno, it would have to be enough to make sure the killers family was taken care of, and she'd need a pretty big incentive to suicide herself for it. Two hundred thou, maybe more. Quarter of a mil of so.'  
  
'That's what I thought,' said Lockley. 'A woman like the Russian wouldn't take a cheque, would she? No, right. She'd want it up front, which means Mrs Griffon would need a considerable sum on top of huge debts, where would she get it?'  
  
'Is her family wealthy?' asked Hemmingway.  
  
'Wealthy enough to give her a quater of a million US dollars for an unspecified reason? No way. If they were, why would she have debts?'  
  
'Wait a second,' said Wesley, 'has she made any large purchases recently?'  
  
'A boat,' interjected Lockley. 'A couple of months ago. Of course,' it hit her like a tonne of bricks, recognition, 'she skimmed two hundred large to pay for his own death, what a cold-hearted bitch. Hanley, I want you to check out how much the boat they bought was, I bet a sizeable chunk of change would be left over from what she withdrew.'  
  
'If that's so,' said Hanley, 'why would she even need to kill her husband for cash? I mean, if she can skim a quarter of a mil on one purchase, chances are she wouldn't be in debt, she'd just skim again.'  
  
'Maybe, but if her debts were quite large, say, more than any sum she could skim, she'd be in trouble.'  
  
Wesley took the chance to show off some useless information he gleamed from the Internet last night. 'Griffon's last book - Granite - was a best- seller for ten weeks, it must've made him almost a million, or even over. He was one rich man.'  
  
'So what's the betting he signed a prenup?' asked Hemmingway. 'He walks away from the marriage, he gets everything he's ever made, she get's nothing, not even the boat.'  
  
'And there is evidence he trawled the bars of an evening looking for female companionship,' said Wesley, only he could put it quite like that. 'A divorce may well have been inevitable. She had everything to lose, now she has everything to gain.'  
  
Lockley counted off her fingers as she did her checklist. 'We got motive, means and if we get the boat skim, then we got evidence too. How's she gonna explain serious cash dissapeared?'  
  
***  
  
'Mrs Gillian Griffon is now officailly wanted by the US for murder,' stated Lockley as she faced Wesley. She was over at Angel Investigations now, standing in the foyer with Wesley. She saw Angel in the background, looking in the fridge and said a casual 'hi' to him. It'd been three days since the revalations at Precinct 17.  
  
'I heard,' said Wesley.  
  
'How?'  
  
'Doctor Hemmingway told me. We've been seeing each other since the case ended.'  
  
'That explains why the duty coroner said his office was such a mess, eh?'  
  
'Yes. Anyway, I heard she got some of his money anyway.'  
  
'Yeah. Two million dollars from a numbered Swiss account we had no idea he even had,' explained Lockley. 'From there she dissapeared like a mist. Sources place her in Japan, but we don't really know. I mean, his assets were never even released to her, he had that Swiss account in case he needed to dash off, must've had some deal with the bankers to release it to his wife if he ever died.'  
  
The boat skim was right, three hundred thousand dollars were missing from a one point two million cash withdrawal. She had done it, she knew they knew, and never set foot back on US soil since. Further investigation by Hanley had revealed debts of over a million dollars to various crime syndicates with which she liked to place bets. The kind of people she got into deep with knew no national boundaries, she had to pay them before dissapearing. They'd just hire someone to find her and put a bullet in her head. Apparently Hanley suggested they do the same. He'd even petitioned the LAPD to pay Wesley a small sum for his help, now that was a surprise.  
  
'Money seems to make the worse of people,' mused Wesley.  
  
'Yeah,' agreed Lockley. 'But the second she comes back we're nailing her for it, we're gonna throw her in stir and forget we ever aknowledged her existence.'  
  
'Hey, Wes,' said Angel from behind him, Wesley turned round to see him. 'You ready? We got that case.'  
  
Wesley turned back to Lockley. 'Thank you for the update, detective, I'm sure you'll catch her. If you ever need my services again, just call.' He flashed his hand and produced an Angel Investigations card, he handed it to Lockley.  
  
'Yeah. Bye. Bye, Angel.' She went out into the sunlight of the LA day.  
  
'See ya around,' shot back Angel as the door shut. 'So you solved it, eh?'  
  
'Yes, taxing but quite satisfying.'  
  
Angel sniffed his coat which was on the coat rack in the reception area. 'What's that, the case or the redhead?'  
  
'Highly amusing. I see your two hundred odd years have only served to sharpen your wit, not dull it.'  
  
'I do my best.'  
  
'If only the real criminal was brought to justice.'  
  
'Come on,' said Angel as he opened the basement door. 'We're burning daylight here.'  
  
Wesley picked up an axe off the kitchen counter and followed Angel down into the abode of the damned, where he could really make a difference. 


End file.
